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Monday, 28 December 2015

Microsoft – Why have you abandoned us

Late 2012 I bought a Nokia Windows phone on a 2 yr contract.
The OperatingSystem was version 7.1 and I thought I’d do some development with
VB Express to make a few apps. Pretty quickly the severe limitations of the OS
restricted further development and I moved on to Android which don’t have
such ridiculous limits put on the OS for the device to pretend it has a better
battery life.

I’m talking about a background running environment for 3’rd
party apps. Android has it, Microsoft’s
OS for smartphones has not, Apple’s iPhone has one that is severely restricted.
Background running is the cornerstone of
all fitness, tracking and logging apps. Without it you can’t get a continuous tracking,
recording, logging or reporting of your position or activity.

And what about the failures of the notification and alarm
system. You can’t have a notification with an alternative sound, and an alarm
won’t stop repeating without manual intervention. Where the management at MS
deliberately trying to limit the availability of 3’rd party apps and the
usability of the device.

Microsoft is starting to see the folly of their ways and
making some stuff available in newer versions, but it’s in 8.1 or even 10 of
the OS. My Nokia smartphone is just 3 years old, of which 2yr was on a binding
contract. It can’t take Windows 8 or higher, meaning it was left for dead by
Microsoft even before the contract ran out. That quick abandonment, = OS
upgrade stop, make it very difficult to move on to a newer hardware version.
The trust is gone,. But worse than that, the market of potential users for apps
utilizing the new features become severely limited. Further putting a damper on
the incentive to make them in the first place. Even if the app uptake
percentage might be higher because of the amount of abandoned users searching
for new stuff in a limited market, the ad fill and value is shocking.

Problem is they treated smartphones like a phone instead of
like a computer. OS for pc’s are kept updated for maybe 7 years.. And you can install the newest version of
Windows 10 on pc’s that is even more than 5 years old. That Nokia was making
the hardware is not an excuse. They took it over as a going concern, and surely
for its dedicated customers.